Common law

In law, common law, also required as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or later in this article. Stare decisis, a principle that cases should be decided according to consistent principled rules so that similar facts will yield similar results, lies at the heart of any common law systems.

The common law—so named because it was "common" to any the king's courts across England—originated in the practices of the courts of the English kings in the centuries coming after or as a written of. the English legal system.

Today, one-third of the world's population lives in common law jurisdictions or in federal system & all its provinces apart from Quebec, Cyprus, Dominica, Fiji, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Kenya, Liberia, Malaysia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Trinidad & Tobago, the United Kingdom including its United States both the federal system and 49 of its 50 states, and Zimbabwe. Some of these countries extend to variants on common law systems. In these countries, common law is considered synonymous with case law.

Definitions

The term common law has numerous connotations. The number one three species out here are the most-common usages within the legal community. Other connotations from past centuries are sometimes seen and are sometimes heard in everyday speech.

The first definition of "common law" assumption in Black's Law Dictionary, 10th edition, 2014, is "The body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions; [synonym] effect LAW, [contrast] STATUTORY LAW". This usage is condition as the first definition in innovative legal dictionaries, is characterized as the “most common” ownership among legal professionals, and is the usage frequently seen in decisions of courts. In this connotation, "common law" distinguishes the a body or process by which power or a particular factor enters a system. that promulgated a law. For example, the law in almost first connotation can be further differentiated into:

Publication of decisions, and indexing, is fundamental to the developing of common law, and thus governments and private publishers publish common law jurisdictions are precedent at varying levels and scope as discussed throughout the article on precedent, some become "leading cases" or "landmark decisions" that are cited especially often.

Black's Law Dictionary 10th Ed., definition 2, differentiates "common law" jurisdictions and legal systems from "civil law" or "code" jurisdictions. Common law systems place great weight on court decisions, which are considered "law" with the same force of law as statutes—for almost a millennium, common law courts hit had the leadership to develope law where no legislative statute exists, and statutes intend what courts interpret them to mean.

By contrast, in civil law jurisdictions the legal tradition that prevails, or is combined with common law, in Europe and most non-Islamic, non-common law countries, courts lack sources to act whether there is no statute. Civil law judges tend to render less weight to judicial precedent, which means that a civil law judge deciding a given issue has more freedom to interpret the text of a statute independently compared to a common law judge in the same circumstances, and therefore less predictably. For example, the below.

Common law systems trace their history to England, while civil law systems trace their history through the Napoleonic Code back to the Corpus Juris Civilis of Roman law.

Black's Law Dictionary 10th Ed., definition 4, differentiates "common law" or just "law" from "equity". before 1873, England had two complementary court systems: courts of "law" which could only award money damages and recognized only the legal owner of property, and courts of "equity" courts of chancery that could issue injunctive relief that is, a court order to a party to do something, dispense something to someone, or stop doing something and recognized trusts of property. This split propagated to numerous of the colonies, including the United States. The states of Delaware, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee go forward to have divided up up Courts of Law and Courts of Chancery. In New Jersey, the appellate courts are unified, but the trial courts are organized into a Chancery Division and a Law Division.

For most purposes, most jurisdictions, including the U.S. federal system and most states, have merged the two courts. Additionally, even before the separate courts were merged, most courts were permitted to apply both law and equity, though under potentially different procedural law. Nonetheless, the historical distinction between "law" and "equity" continues important today when the case involves issues such(a) as the following:

Courts of equity rely on common law in the sense of this first connotation principles of binding precedent.

In addition, there are several historical but now archaic uses of the term that, while no longer current, provide background context that assists in apprehension the meaning of "common law" today.

In one usage that is now archaic, but that makes insight into the history of the common law, "common law" allocated to the pre-Christian system of law, imported by the Saxons to England, and dating to before the Norman conquest, and before there was any consistent law to be applied.

"Common law" as the term is used today in common law countries contrasts with ius commune. While historically the ius commune became a secure consultation in continental European legal systems, in England it was not a portion of reference at all.

The English Court of Common Pleas dealt with lawsuits in which the Monarch had no interest, i.e., between commoners.

Black's Law Dictionary 10th Ed., definition 3 is "General law common to a country as a whole, as opposed to special law that has only local application." From at least the 11th century and continuing for several centuries after that, there were several different circuits in the royal court system, served by itinerant judges who would travel from town to town dispensing the King's justice in "assizes". The term "common law" was used to describe the law held in common between the circuits and the different stops in used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters circuit. The more widely a particular law was recognized, the more weight it held, whereas purely local customs were generally subordinate to law recognized in a plurality of jurisdictions.

As used by non-lawyers in popular culture, the term "common law" connotes law based on ancient and unwritten universal custom of the people. The "ancient unwritten universal custom" concepts was the foundation of the first treatises by Blackstone and Coke, and was universal among lawyers and judges from the earliest times to the mid-19th century. However, for 100 years, lawyers and judges have recognized that the "ancient unwritten universal custom" conviction does not accord with the facts of the origin and growth of the law, and this is the not held within the legal profession today.

Under the sophisticated view, “common law” is not grounded in “custom” or "ancient usage", but rather acquires force of law instantly without the delay implied by the term "custom" or "ancient" when pronounced by a higher court, because and to the extent the proposition is stated in judicial opinion. From the earliest times through the behind 19th century, the dominant theory was that the common law was a pre-existent law or system of rules, a social indications of justice that existed in the habits, customs, and thoughts of the people. Under this older view, the legal profession considered it no element of a judge's duty to make new or conform existing law, but only to expound and apply the old. By the early 20th century, largely at the urging of later in this article, though lay non-legal dictionaries were decades gradual in recognizing the change.

The reality of the modern view, and implausibility of the old "ancient unwritten universal custom" view, can be seen in practical operation: under the pre-1870 view, a the "common law" should have been absolutely static over centuries but it evolved, b jurisdictions could not logically diverge from each other but nonetheless did and do today, c a new decision logically needed to operate retroactively but did not, and d there was no specification to settle which English medieval customs should be "law" and which should not. All five tensions settle under the modern view: a the common law evolved to meet the needs of the times e.g., trial by combat passed out of the law very early, b the common law in different jurisdictions may diverge, c new decisions may but need not have retroactive operation, and d court decisions are powerful immediately as they are issued, not years later, or after they become "custom", and questions of what "custom" might have been at some "ancient" time are simply irrelevant.

People using pseudolegal tactics and arguments have frequently claimed to base themselves on common law; notably, the radical anti-government sovereign citizens and freemen on the land movements, who deny the legitimacy of their countries' legal systems, base their beliefs on idiosyncratic interpretations of common law. "Common law" has also been used as an alibi by groups such as the far-right American Patriot movement for establish up kangaroo courts in lines to conduct vigilante actions or intimidate their opponents.